45 - What is Gratitude, and How Do We Experience It?

This is the first of two episodes on gratitude.

The final episode of the year will drop November 26. In this final episode, we will look back over our first year of “Living with Heart: From Birth to Death.” We will start the new season December 31 with a new episode that focuses on New Year’s Resolutions.

What is gratitude and how do we experience it?  Three factors play a part in experiencing gratitude.

Gratitude begins with our needs. God created us with an abundance of needs. 

Whether we like it or not, we are “needy” creations of God.

Having our needs addressed and fulfilled is how gratitude occurs.  

Our needs cannot be fulfilled without being in need of God and others.

Gratitude is experienced through relationship.

Needs are covered in great detail in:

• Needs of the Heart by Chip Dodd

• “Living with Heart: From Birth to Death” podcast, episodes 2-16 

The 3 factors that summarize our essential needs are:

• We all desire to belong and matter.

• We all seek safety and care.

• We all crave to experience a full life.

Being in need or being “needy” is not a bad thing or a weakness. It is a human experience over which we are actually powerless.

We are created in ways that we cannot change. We can run from how we are made, but that does not change how we are created. 

Many of us are trained to believe that having needs means you are weak.

Most people see having needs as:

• a weakness.

• putting yourself in danger of being rejected.

• a negative experience that can keep them from belonging and mattering.

• a negative experience that can keep them from being safe and cared for.

• an experience that will keep them from having a full life.